seriously, I have been looking at my travel expenses, and came up with the I’m getting shafted here, ages ago on Farecompare I read how business travellers get screwed over all the time, but when you look at the fact you spend 50K gbp on airline tickets in a year you start to feel that’s something is going wrong here..

btw I’m only bitching due to trying to find tickets to South Africa, Copenhagen, Las Vegas (no not pubcon ! ), and after getting ripped 2 weeks back for my Seattle trip, I think that a team of elite SEO’s should just buy a plane !

anyway a couple of good reads are

best time to buy cheap airfare
holiday travel checklist

DaveN

So the week started the a bottle of wine with Vanessa Fox, as i joked about her newly shaven pussy ( really Vanessa took a photo even) we sat in her beautiful home which has the sea just outside her patio, watching DR Phil … Hmmmm I thought I recognised a manly figure on the show but Vanessa told me I was mistaken. Vanessa dropped me back at my hotel leaving her a cool 2 hours to sleep and pack for Vegas ..

The Next Day I worked until around 2pm and grabbed a town car and shot into Seattle with a mission of getting secretly inside the Seomoz high security pit. I had many ideas, scaling walls kicking down doors, instead I Opted for using the intercom. Once I had gained entry the mozzers who were in total awe or surprise quickly started entertaining me, mainly by pulling the office apart !!! BTW I shot a Video with Rand for his whiteboard Fridays..

The Next day was Microsoft … its started around 9:45 in the morning and ended around 11pm, the day was a mixture of what they are doing, what they have done and my view and opinions on the 2 beta tests that I begged for, Webmaster Portal and Gatineau

DaveN

I tend to fly out of Manchester Airport these days and stay in the short stay parking at Terminal 3 or the short stay at Terminal 1, it’s Like £25 a day but at least my car is undercover and In a secure part of the airport…

well I parked in the short stay carpark on the 20th of last month, I was only away 1 night and when I came back one of the supporting box sections had rusted through and dropped a 1 foot lump of metal and crap on my BMW..

photo’s :

Car park:

BMW 5 Series:

I’m just happy it didn’t hit me on the head !!

DaveN

I was just reading Hitwise’s Blog, and was kinda amazed how much the travel sector dominated the the cheap searches, so off I went to where I get my keywords from to check it out, I honestly thought cheap xxxx insurance would have played a bigger part, and I was a little disappointed in Wordze this time around.

Hitwise off their Blog
1 Cheap Flights
2 Cheap Airfares
3 Super Cheap Auto
4 Cheap flights nz
5 Super Cheap
6 cheap flights to australia
7 Super cheap computers
8 cheap flights
9 cheap seats
10 cheap air fares

Keyword Discovery Global ( -Drugs Names)
1 cheap tickets
2 cheap flights
3 cheap airline tickets
4 cheap airfare
5 cheap loan
6 cheap auto insuranc
7 cheap hotels
8 cheap car insurance
9 cheap international airfare
10 cheap ticket

Keyword Discovery UK ( nothing removed)
1 cheap flights
2 cheap holidays
3 cheap car insurance
4 cheap laptops
5 cheap flight
6 cheap travel insurance
7 cheap holiday
8 cheap mobile phones
9 cheap flights to cyprus
10 cheap cars

wordze (hmmm not too happy here)
1 cheap flights
2 break cheap disneyland paris
3 cheap dvd r
4 airport cheap manchester parking
5 ball cheap golf
6 cheap durham flight raleigh
7 cheap flight uganda
8 8310 cheap nokia
9 cheap compact flash
10 airport car cheap hire malaga

wordtracker
1 cheap tickets
2 cheap airline tickets
3 cheap flights
4 cheap hotels
5 cheap airfare
6 cheap flights paris
7 cheap gas
8 cheap airfares
9 cheap travel
10 cheap flights sydney

Msn Adcenter ( removed drugs )
1 cheap tickets
2 cheap flights
3 cheap hotels
4 cheap airfare
5 cheap cigarettes
6 cheap hotel
7 cheap ticket
8 cheap cruises
9 cheap airfares
10 cheap holidays

Google Adwords
1 cheap flights
2 cheap hotels
3 cheap accommodation
4 cheap air flights
5 cheap air tickets
6 cheap airfare
7 cheap airfares
8 cheap airline
9 cheap airline flights
10 cheap airline ticket

if anything to me it just confirmed again to me that keyword research need to be spread across my points of reference.

DaveN

September 14/15th

Hotel : Britannia Hotel Manchester city centre -
Friday £69 for b&b single, Sat £89 for b&b single
Friday £70 for b&b double, Sat £105 for b&b double.

I was chatting with Peter over at search engine serious about the fact we hadn’t had a piss up for awhile, he suggested that we should have a get together, maybe in Manchester, and so if you want to meet like minded Seo type people, then come along, I travel all over the world speaking at conferences and I get a great deal from that, but I get more personally from sitting in a bar and chatting, and good example was a few years back, I sat in a bar and we chatted about adsense and best place to place the ads, coloured links etc, someone made a joke some data they had, in an hour a plan was made and in 2 months I made 28,000 usd in adsense lol… you can’t knock that ..

so if you fancy a pint with ME, I will see you in Manchester.. Peter has posted up room rates and the like.

If you are coming just leaving a comment .. Peter’s Blog

DaveN

American Airlines Secret Hotline, I was sent a link from a friend in the travel industry that Rick Seaney just blogged the Super Secret Number you can text a Hate or Love message..

What would you do If Google had one, or maybe they already do ;), remember the Happy face and Sad face, what if, for a trusted user those little faces actually did something, or even more if you had you own little GUI running down the side of the serps and with a press of a button that site was gone for ever.. just tinhat thinking ;)

DaveN

If you are thinking about going to Pubcon in Las Vegas
it’s well worth reading what Rick Seaney had to say in his article cheap airline tickets to las vegas. I have also emailed Rick asking him to see if he can help me out with travelling to conferences, best time to buy etc..

One of my Favourites was his article on Expedia how to get the best prices from the airline by filtering the carrier.

DaveN

Rick over at Farecompare has just written an article on how he proves if the airlines drop the ticket price and if you have purchased a higher priced one you can get a refund, and in some cases a $100 E-Certificate.. Ok in fairness I have known about this for a while, I have used their Airline Ticket Email Alerts for some time now. The Airline Ticket article goes on to show what Rick did.

quote from article :

These tickets had to go down in price later that same day with the ultimate goal of making a refund claim; documenting each airlines claims process, warts and all; and include copies of the original tickets, refunded tickets, and all claims correspondence.
it’s been dugg here :)

DaveN

Over the last few months I have been racking up the miles travelling to various conferences to speak for Webmaster World and SES…a grand total of 14,414 miles. Seems staggering when you actually work it out!
Postscript: Ooops, didn’t account for return journeys… should be 28,828 miles.

In June it was WMW New Orleans which everyone will remember for Ian Turner going missing. August I was at SES San Jose which is a trip that I will never forget. October was a European SES in Stockholm when I got stuck at Amsterdam airport on the way home as I was in the bar. Then most recently my trip to SES Chicago which all I can say about is “snow everywhere” .

I now aim to relax for the rest of the year and enjoy Christmas.
Roll on 2006… I feel it will be a very busy year for me.
DaveN